The conviction of suspected Indian Mujahideen (IM) militant Shahzad Ahmad in the Batla House encounter case has given immense satisfaction to the investigators as it helped the Delhi Police restore its credibility. With the encounter mired in controversy, the probe team faced the biggest challenge of maintaining the highest degree of transparency as well as making a watertight case against the alleged IM operative.
Accordingly, the investigation of the case was handed over to the Crime Branch, led by Inspector Satish Chander Sharma, who had successfully investigated several high-profile cases, including Phoolan Devi and Shivani Bhatnagar murder cases.
“All along, it was kept in mind that on account of certain doubts being raised in certain quarters about the encounter, it would be expected of the CB as an independent and professional agency to investigate from all possible angles, covering all aspects,” the chargesheet stated.
Ten days after the Batla House encounter, the investigation was handed over to the Inter-State Cell (ISC) of Crime Branch under the supervision of ACP Rajender Bakshi and a special team of 18 personnel, including three sub-inspectors was formed under the supervision of Inspector Sharma, who had joined the force in 1990 and till now, has filed charge sheets in over 300 cases.
Keeping in mind that it was a controversial case, Inspector Sharma suggested his seniors that they should start the investigation with a scientific method and apart from collecting the technical evidence, they should also take help of ballistic experts, doctors and scientists. After 12 days of encounter, the ISC sleuths along with the expertise of Central Forensic Sciences laboratory (CFSl) visited l-18 Batla House, where the encounter took place between a team of Special Cell and suspected IM operatives, in which Inspector MC Sharma lost his life.
“They recreated the scene once again and seized several cartridges from the spot. They had questioned over 250 locals as well as the team members of encounter team and recorded their statement,” a senior police officer said, adding that locals had staged protest when the investigators were questioning other residents and recreating the scene.
A senior police officer, who monitored the probe, said that they had investigated the case from several angles. During the probe, several people had filed petitions and raised a number of questions. Interestingly, they had investigated the case from their angles and also investigated the case from Media Houses’ theory. The toughest task was to reply to allegations that Inspector MC Sharma was not killed by IM members, but fell to ‘friendly fire’.
After two years of investigation, the ISC filed the watertight chargesheet before the city court in 2010 and with the help of technical experts they had also submitted the entire animated version of the encounter; which was technically supervised by AIIMS.
In their investigation, they had proved that Atif Ameen and Mohamamd Sajid, the two slain ‘IM operatives’, were not only armed, but had fired on Inspector Mohan Chand Sharma and Head Constable Balwant Singh Rana from a very close range.